The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. Thomas Huxley

Sunday, December 08, 2013

Popery

The Pope has ruffled a few feathers....

Many of the more history-aware readers of the early capitalists (Smith,
Ricardo etc) have pointed to the societal value systems that originally
surrounded the practice of capitalism itself. As they were to an
amazing extent Scots (a useful text here is Herman: How the Scots invented the Modern World ) this world-view incorporated Calvinism and the rather severe religious affiliations that arose out of this.

Those Christian ethics informed business for a good chunk of the first
century of the Industrial Revolution, a point made by such recent
commentators as P J O'Rourke. Smith's earlier work, for example, was
'The Theory of Moral Sentiments'. Along with the 'Wealth of Nations'
and a never-published third tome, Smith had intended the three to be
read as a triptych of sermons. Yes, sermons. That's why the damned
books are so wordy.

That intimate association between a stern but ultimately sympathetic
value system, and the practice of industry and trade, was somewhat
broken by the late 19th century (vide Engels and Marx), and finished off
comprehensively by the mid-20th, as competing religions which were
essentially (as David P Goldman argues) tribal/nationalistic, brought different value systems to great swathes of the globe.

We are still reeling from the turbulence this competition generated, and
the virtual disappearance of organised religion and its value systems,
from any association with trade and commerce, has led to two observable
aspects of the zeitgeist:

1 - A Chestertonian plethora of quasi-religions (from AGW to
enviromentalism in general, not to say Marixism, Leninism,
Pan-Africanism, Third caliphate Pan-Muslimism) which all demand faith,
have ways of dealing to apostates, and none of which have anything like
the spread or ritual attractiveness of the old ones.
2 - a value-free trade and commerce, which tends to an explicit disavowal of any larger pretensions: societal good included.

The first thing is, given that we have dug ourselves this hole, gotten
into it, and burnt the ladder, how do we get out? And the second thing
is, do we have to hit some sort of wall (sorry about the mixed metaphor,
we are down a hole, must have walls down there too) to wake us up
enough to build a new ladder, and climb out?

And just being nice to Gaia, alone, won't cut it. That's another
faith-based initiative. But just like the new Pope may have been trying
to warn us, we may have to be much, much nicer to each other first.

Or, possibly, much, much nastier. Because a whole lotta people will
want to jump on that ladder to a Better Life, however defined. And the
laws of Ladder Physics still apply.